Conventionally, with respect to an image forming device such as a printer, a toner image can be formed as follows: i) when a surface of a photoconductive drum is charged by an electrostatic charge roller, an electrostatic latent image is formed by exposure to a light emitting diode (LED) head; ii) toner that is formed in a thin-film status oil the developer roller is electrostatically attached on the electrostatic latent image to form a toner image; iii) the toner image is transferred to a sheet by a transfer roller, and affixed by a fuser, and the image is formed. Moreover, toner remaining on the photoconductive drum after the toner image is transferred is scraped by a cleaning blade and collected as waste toner. Moreover, waste developer is created by the waste toner.
Waste toner collected by the cleaning blade is carried by a toner carrying device and discarded after it is sent to a waste toner box. In order to do so, the toner carrying device has a coil-shaped carrying spiral or the like and carries the waste toner by rotating the carrying spiral. See, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Application Publication No. 2006-78532.
However, with respect to the conventional printer that is discussed above, when the printer is placed in a high-humidity environment and the inside of the printer main body reaches a high temperature, the waste toner absorbs moisture, and a temperature of the waste toner rises. When pressure is added to the waste toner corresponding to rotation of the carrying spiral in this condition, the waste toner is flocculated around the carrying spiral and becomes attached to a periphery of the carrying spiral.
As a result, the waste toner cannot be smoothly carried to the waste toner box.